“[in 1998] I know my political ideas affect what I write but I've tried to follow the facts wherever they land. Every topic I've written about begins as a question. How do police departments behave? Why do bureaucracies function the way they do? What moral intuitions do people have? How do courts make their decisions? What do blacks want from the political system? I can honestly say I didn't know the answers to those questions when I began looking into them.” PeopleKnowsWayWantWritingI CanIdeasFactsPoliticalDecisionAnswersMoralWrittenLandFunctionPoliceCourtIntuitionHonestlyBehaveDepartmentTopicsBureaucracyPolitical SystemsPolice Department Author:James Q. Wilson
“Many, if not most, of the difficulties we experience in dealing with government agencies arise from the agencies being part of a fragmented and open political system…The central feature of the American constitutional system—the separation of powers—exacerbates many of these problems. The governments of the US were not designed to be efficient or powerful, but to be tolerable and malleable. Those who designed these arrangements always assumed that the federal government would exercise few and limited powers.” IfsProblemGovernmentPoliticalPowerfulExerciseDifficultySeparationAriseFeaturesAgencyEfficientArrangementsFederal GovernmentPolitical SystemsTolerableFragmentedSeparation Of PowersGovernment Agencies Author:James Q. Wilson
“We live in a world shaped by the ambiguous legacy of the Enlightenment...[it] enlarged the scope of human freedom, prepared our minds for the scientific method, made man the measure of all things, and placed individual consent front and center on the political stage.” MenWorldMindHumansMadePoliticalIndividualStageFrontsEnlightenmentAll ThingsMethodPreparedLegacyConsentScopeAmbiguousScientific MethodHuman Freedom Author:James Q. Wilson
